LICENTIA COGITATIONIS

As a scholar with specific subject matter expertise in anthropology and public health, and as an individual living with HIV, a first generation college student, and queer man with history of substance abuse whose work and life are deeply intertwined, I have derived a lot of comfort and hope in bearing witness to the power of community coalitions while accompanying community leaders and advocates in mobilizing to take care of one another, to act, and to engage in necessary fights around issues that have long been in existence: universal and meaningful healthcare, abolition, housing rights, equal employment, gender equality, environmental justice, and rights of marginalized communities, displaced populations, migrants and immigrants. I have worked alongside community leaders, activists, and health and social providers in the field of HIV and disease prevention who have long refused to accept the status quo, and have instead, created their own forms of care or reimagined the existing sy...

Thinking About Thinking This section is an introduction to the theoretical framework used in this project. Or, perhaps, it is better to say, a rejection of the rigidity of contemporary theory and occidental frames for analysis are what is presented here; introducing the work of deconstruction as a generative mechanism for discovery, an alternative to production, that is truly a dialectical symbol in action. Epistemology Epistemology is how we know. In KO we make implicit epistemic statements about knowledge of concepts, acts (such as representation), entities, and systems. In so doing, we create knowledge, and our epistemic stance dictates what kind of knowledge that is. Some common names of epistemic stances are: pragmatic, positivistic, operationalist, referential, instrumental, empiricist, rationalist, realist, etc. Each of these makes claims as to what kind of knowledge can be created through research, and how it is gathered and how it is presented. These epistemic stances d...